The Current West and its Origins

Government is one of the most major areas of change.

You can't address this topic and ignore stuff like the division of government from religion in England and Europe, the advent of the rights of people over the rights of kings, and other steps that led to the governments we have today in western nations.

 

"Government" didn't pop out of thin air. It's on the tail end of various influences, which is what I was referring to, not the many and various end products of those influences, like "government."

 

I think the root of (modern) western civilization is the Roman Empire. Our legal and political systems and religious understanding largely comes from there.

 

I would need to see evidence of that.

I don't see that we got the big ticket items developed in the western world such as separation of church and state, democracy, etc. because of Christianity.

In fact, these were cases of wresting power FROM religion.

 

Again, your missing my point. We didn't develop separation of church and state because of government. There had to be cultural precursors to that to create an environment where those were thinkable ideas. If you have some other idea of what it was besides my idea, feel free to note it for discussion.

 

I'm not clear on what you mean by "early days", Will. In its earliest days there was no correct version of Christianity - there were a gaggle of competing sects who all had their own ideas about who and what God and Jesus were. Constantine tried to resolve those theological disputes at Nicea but failed to do so, and ironically the religious dispute between the Arian Vandals and the predominantly Catholic Romans contributed to the fall of Rome.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that you and Lil Mike are referring to two different things - Mike was referring to the philosophy while you are referring to its institutionalized form, which I presume to be the Catholic Church. Indeed, the Church could be exceedingly and at times brutally autocratic, but that's only half the story. Individuals and groups within the Church played a leading role in the development and evolution of Individualism and Liberalism in the West, and they did so largely on the basis of Christian philosophy and ethics. The first individual rights doctrine was written by a Franciscan friar (William of Ockham) in a dispute between his order and the papacy, and subsequent generations of theologians built on his work, from the Conciliarists who challenged the unitary authority of the pope to the Dominicans at the School of Salamanca who helped lay the groundwork of international law in their defense of the indigenous peoples of America. As was the case with the Franciscans and Conciliarists, this progress was driven by conflicts within the Church, usually by groups who were at odds with the papacy and its power. Thus, it might be said that the RCC played a schizophrenic role in the evolution of Individualism and Liberalism in the West - at times it played a leading role in its evolution and at other times it played a leading role in resisting it, and at times it played both roles simultaneously. One has to remember that for a long time following the fall of the Western Roman Empire the educated classes consisted largely of men from the Church, so it goes to figure that these men would play a large role in the philosophical evolution of the West. However, to Mike's point, the common philosophical and ethical point of reference was first and foremost to Christianity.

And which "advent of democracy" are you referring to?

The one in Athens certainly didn't require the separation of government from religion - the two were inextricably intertwined in Ancient Greece. Neither did the rebirth of democracy in the commons, boroughs and burgs of Medieval Europe where the town and city charters are full of references to Christian "brotherhood" and other aspects of Christian philosophy and ethics. Finally, while the Founding Fathers here in America did indeed establish a secular republic, not a theocracy, they constantly spoke of the influence and role of religion in its establishment. It's not till you get to the revolution in France where you find an effort truly dedicated to separating government from religion, and that was bitterly resisted in the conservative countryside where the Jacobins meted out some of the worst excesses of the Reign of the Terror:

Les noyades de Nantes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drownings_at_Nantes

And, of course, there was the cartoonish Cult of Reason that the Jacobins established to replace Christianity and the Catholic Church:

Cult of Reason
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_Reason

Again, you found no such interest much less effort here in the oldest continuous democracy in the world.

The idea of the separation of secular and religious rule is quite old, actually, and while that separation does exist to some degree, religion still plays a major role in our democracy because it plays a major role in the lives of the people who make up that democracy and elect the public officials who represent them and their views. The recent Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade is a prominent example of how religion can play a major role in our government, and while I've argued that Roe could have been founded on firmer legal grounds that might have prevented such a ruling, I don't think anyone disputes the fact that religion and more specifically people's religious beliefs played a major role in the successful years-long campaign to overturn Roe.

 

There's no denying Rome's contributions to the modern world, but I'm curious why you didn't continue back to Classical Greece?

It could be argued that the rule of written law in the West was initiated with Draco's Code/Constitution, and of course the reforms of Solon and Cleisthenes resulted in the birth of democracy in Athens. One could also argue that the philosophical foundations of Western Civilization were laid by the Greeks and then passed on to the Romans, where they would have an enormous influence on the likes of Marcus Tullius Cicero, who in turn influenced Enlightenment Era figures such as Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, who had this to say about his handiwork:

This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before, but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, not yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. All its authority rests on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc….

And speaking of the Romans, it's difficult to think of a Roman who had a greater influence on the men of the American Enlightenment than Cicero. When Jefferson and others spoke of inherent and inalienable natural rights, they were writing and talking about rights associated with the Natural Law that Cicero famously wrote about in De re publica:

True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions. And it does not lay its commands or prohibitions upon good men in vain, though neither have any effect on the wicked. It is a sin to try to to alter this law, nor is it allowable to attempt to repeal any part of it, and it is impossible to abolish it entirely. We cannot be freed from its obligations by senate or people, and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it. And there will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is, God, over us all, for he is the author of this law, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge. Whoever is disobedient is fleeing from himself and denying his human nature, and by reason of this very fact he will suffer the worst penalties, even if he escapes what is commonly considered punishment. . .

 

Alrighty, it's time I threw my own answer out there, and I'll qualify my answers with the question of what do we consider the "current West"? In light of that question, I'm going to break my answer down into three parts - the Long View, Short View and Really, Really Short View.

1) Long View:

When Polydectes first brought this up I contemplated this from the long view of History, and in that context I would say the "current West" was born during the Late Middle Ages, and the event I attribute its birth to is the writing of the first individual rights doctrine in the early 14th Century by William of Ockham, arguably the greatest philosopher of the Middle Ages and certainly one of the great polymaths in Western History:

William of Ockham
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Ockham
https://iep.utm.edu/ockham/#:~:text=Ockham’s divine command theory can be seen as,state, and freedom of speech. Table of Contents

We first see Ockham's work on individual rights emerge during the Poverty Controversy of the 1320s, and this continued until his death the year before the Black Plague ravaged Europe. Much of this doctrine is expressed in Ockham's Dialogus

Dialogus
http://publications.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/pubs/dialogus/wock.html

wherein he argued on behalf on rights such as freedom of thought and speech, promoted the separation of Church and secular State, and first outlined the social contract theory that was later credited to the likes of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, with the principle point that power was derived from God and through the people, not the monarch as "Divine Rights" theorists contended.

While I don't consider Ockham the father of Western Individualism and Liberalism, I do think his work marked the point where the West began to emerge from Ancient and Medieval modes of thought and into the Modern. There was a time when I might have argued that the Enlightenment was when the birth of the "current West" began, but I've come to realize that the philosophers of the Enlightenment were largely covering old ground and repeating arguments that in some cases had been made centuries before them. What makes the Enlightenment important and groundbreaking, in my opinion, was that the people of this era were finally put those ideas into practice and establish the constitutional, democratic republics that we live in today.

2) Short View

If we are to look at the birth of the "current West" from a Short View in much of the same way that many Historians look at the birth of the Modern Era, with things like the formation of nation-states, I would say World War I marked the beginning of "the current West". One can hardly look at the current composition and conflicts in our world without tracing them back to the Great War. World War I led to World War II which led to the Cold War, which only recently ended, and now we find ourselves in the opening decades of the Post Cold War Era.

3) Really, Really Short View

Given the new era we are living in and how new technologies such as the computer and Internet have radically transformed our world, it's not difficult to believe we are witnessing the beginning of an entirely new age, and the birth of the "current West" is happening right now. I can remember when I was studying Media back in the 1980s and we were reading books like Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man and discussing how mass communications and television had revolutionized the world, we had absolutely no idea of how much the Internet would revolutionize the world and change the people living in it. These changes have been much greater and much more profound than the changes that took place with the invention of the telegraph, radio and television - we're talking changes on a level that are rivaled only by that of the introduction of the printing press around 1440, which marked the birth of mass communications in the West and contributed to a host of other developments that were made possible by the relatively fast and inexpensive spread of information. What we're doing here as we speak - communicating across the planet in real time via text, voice, photographs and video - is truly revolutionary, and it has changed the world before our very eyes. We're also just becoming aware of how this revolution in technology is changing us on a human and individual level. It's quite exciting if you think about, living at the dawn of a new age and watching how it is changing everything. Of course, these changes are having both a positive and negative impact on our lives, and where they will lead is anyone's guess. Hopefully, it will lead to more freedom and prosperity and not the erosion of both.

 

I'm just saying that separation of church and state didn't come from church. Western kings who refused to follow church edict were often doing it for reasons other than determination to improve the quality of government or abide by changing culture. And, surely the battles of Christians v Christians allowed serious thinkers toward ideas of separating the church from the power of government.

 

Good post.

Yes, you can see the progress in thought that helped wrest power from the kings and to some extent from centralized religious power. And, that probably led the ruling church to splinter to some extent.

But, I'm not so sure that is why a separation developed between religion and government. In fact, how many Americans today understand why that portion of our first amendment is important or where it came from? I doubt people of bygone centuries were better educated, though they did have more recent experience with religious rule.

Nothing I've said could possibly suggest that individuals don't have personal religious views that affect their political decisions. I don't really see that as being on topic. Our government wasn't designed for atheists - it was designed by and for those who believe in god.

Yes, in my view our highest court has moved strongly toward political agenda backed by their religious views - absolutely contrary to what our framers laid down for us. And, one of our most powerful parties CELEBRATES! I'm not sure what you were leading to with that, but it certainly shows that to allow our form of government to last, we the people need to work to maintain that form of government. Maybe we should start teaching civics again. Maybe we shouldn't be so prone to thinking that education is job training and recognize that philosophy and other social topics are seriously important.

Another case is that we could very easily lose our democracy, the very foundation of western government, simply by failing to understand and support it against those who acquire power through other means.

 

OK I don't think anyone is arguing that the church invented separation of church and state. The fact that you would even state that shows that once again, you really don't understand my meaning. I thought that @Talon did an excellent job of breaking down how Christian thinkers influenced our ideas about the individual and the state, but I'm guessing you didn't really get his posts either.

I honestly am at a loss to pass on an idea that every other poster in this thread seems to get. Let me try one more time. When you hear Christianity, you are thinking of the Church and or it's various denominations since the reformation. When I'm referring to Christianity, I'm referring not to the institutions, which you seem to despise, but the way the teachings of Christianity over time effected the various western cultures, giving them a commonality and providing the cultural precursors that eventually led to the Enlightenment.

 

I would think so, and I think the Hussites exposed the vulnerability of the RCC and its defenders after their astonishingly successful revolt in Bohemia. After that, the writing was on the wall and it was only a matter of time before others followed suit.

Setting aside Jesus' dictum "Render unto Caesar", in my estimation the separation was a product of the power struggles that were waged against the Catholic and Protestant churches, and I think the English led the way on this, from William of Ockham to John Wycliffe to the Puritans who rebelled against Charles I and his attempts to impose his beliefs and the power of the church he headed on everyone in England and Scotland. After the English Civil War, the Reformation and the Glorious Reformation religious toleration was finally established in the Anglo-American world (excepting Catholics and Jews) and this broke the link between the English Church and the English state. Naturally, the break was felt here in America, where the Puritans revolted against the Anglican authorities in England during the Glorious Revolution and later when Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and their colleagues in Virginia disestablished the Church of England with the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, which became the basis of the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment. The goal in the English and American revolutions was to establish a government where religious toleration and pluralism could exist, whereas the goal in the French Revolution was quite different.

As for how many Americans know and understand this and how important it is I suspect the number is not near as high as it should be.

I'm sorry if my response left you with that impression, for that was not my intent. I was just pointing out how our representative democracy (or constitutional republic) doesn't always makes its decisions "independent of consulting prelates or ancient religious writings" because many of the people participating in our democracy do consult prelates and ancient religious writings, so maybe our democracy will never be entirely free of such influences on public policy.

Agreed, and to that I would add we need to do a much better job of teaching History. I think that would go a long way towards remedying the shortcomings in the other disciplines you mentioned, as well.

Absolutely, and I think we are beset with acquisitive forces both domestic and international, public and private, the likes of which we have never had to deal with before, and our lack of experience dealing with these forces puts ordinary Americans and their freedom and prosperity at risk. Certainly, our ancestors confronted similar forces in the past and we can learn from their successes and failures but we are very much in uncharted territory here. For example, Joel Kotkin has likened these forces to the ones that existed during the Feudal Era and the similarities are striking, but we are contending with these forces on completely different terrain. What worked in the past isn't necessarily going to work now.

 

My comments have been on the separation of religion and state as exists in our constitution's first amendment, and its sources. Commonality of religious views in society doesn't encourage that separation. In fact, it makes religious views enforced by government much more palatable and change harder to accept.

I don't accept your accusation that the separation of church and state comes from despising religion. In fact, I suspect you don't believe that either. So, I'm guessing you were just resorting to that kind of argument.

 

Yes, I'd guess that if western religion had remained less diversified it would have allowed stronger binding between religion and government. Reaching our constitution would have at the very least taken more time if religion hadn't fragmented as much as it did.

So for quite a while separation of church and state is important to religion. But, when the divisions of religion share a common popular view, it makes that separation harder to maintain.

Even though there are divisions, it's easy for a Christian majority to work for our government to support Christian religious practices and beliefs that are shared, but where the practices and beliefs have no justification outside of religious views - and where they even clearly and directly conflict with the first amendment.

Yes - as well they should. Our moral and ethical principles have foundations that must be understood.

The catch in government includes dividing religious views and what are principles of morality, ethics and government that need to be enforced on all by government. We incorporated same sex marriage, as our principles of equality, etc., can't be overridden by popular religious view. And, we did that at a time when it was not a popular religious view, but was consistent with what we have learned about treatment of mankind and the proper role of government.

Of course, now we've turned around and had our highest court tell us that government's rightful role is to dictate the healthcare decisions of individual women, and draw doubt on even issues such as contraception and same sex marriage for reasons that don't have any legitimate foundation outside of religion. Even the opinion of the court started with the recognition of the starkly different beliefs of the population.

Strong points, for sure. And, interesting comment on where we are today.

 

It's like you read and responded to a totally different post. OK I get it, you are not going to understand my comments in this thread on this topic.

 

I don't always listen well - sorry if I missed your point.

I'm still reading your posts and will do my best.

 

I would agree with that, and nowhere was religion more diversified and pluralistic than in America. In New England you had the Puritans where the disputes in the Massachusetts theocracy led to the formation of the more tolerant Puritan colony in Roger Williams' Rhode Island. To the south you had William Penn and the Quakers in Pennsylvania and to their south the Calverts and Catholics in Maryland. Here in Virginia, the Commonwealth earned the nickname "Old Dominion" from Charles II for maintaining its allegiance to the Stuart monarchy and the Church of England through the English Civil War (hence UVA's mascot the Cavaliers), although Presbyterians were allowed to practice their beliefs. The Carolina colony was likewise predominantly Anglican and Georgia was pluralistic for the most part (once again, Catholics were excepted). Yet despite all the talk of people fleeing here to escape religious persecution many of them dragged the intolerance of the Old World to the New. The anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish bigotry that was rife in England became a feature of religious life here in America and the Protestant sects and dissenters were frequently at odds with one another, so the Colonists were all too familiar with religious intolerance, persecution and the perils associated with the State establishing an official religion. If ever there was a nation where establishing a State Church was inconceivable, it was in the crazy quilt of religious belief and fragmented secular power in the United States.

Ah, the "perils" of American democracy and imperfection of our Constitution, and to be fair to Christian and religious groups they're not alone in this. There are other interest groups who try to force what is considered by many to be unconstitutional ideas and policies through our democracy and government. The unitary powers of the President/Executive Branch only compound the problem, which was why there was opposition to creating one in the first place.

Personally, I think the problem throughout our entire government is that it has lost sight of what it was instituted for:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men

The Supreme Court is just the most obvious example of our government's refusal to fulfill its primary duty - to secure our rights. The Executive and Legislative branches are every bit as guilty of this as the Judicial, and to make matters worse, Americans have created a federal bureaucracy that has become a power unto itself since the 1960s. Instead of serving as the instrument that secures our rights, our government has become the greatest threat to our rights, and elements on both sides of the political aisle are responsible for this. In the quest for power, politicians and public officials are actively engaged in destroying the safeguards that the Founders established in the Constitution to prevent exactly what is happening today - the emergence of a rapacious all-powerful State that treats rights like the rapacious all-powerful monarchs that the Founders overthrew in the 18th Century. I sense a great unease amongst our people, and I think it's because they sense that our Republic has become unmoored and we are moving backwards instead of forward, and that's largely a product of us forgetting who we are as Americans and where we came from, and public officials either ignoring or forgetting what our government was instituted for - to secure our rights.

So, relative to the topic of discussion and questions raised here, it would appear that we are hurtling towards a time and state that existed before the current West. It's little wonder we find very knowledgable, thoughtful and concerned people writing books like this:

 

You would need to be more specific about what you hate about our government.

I'd point out that as we hit the industrial age and as population density increased the issues of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness had to include issues such as clean water, clean air, equality before the law, and rules relating to various kinds of infringement.

And, these are problems that every western style democracy deals with, so it's not just about OUR democracy - it's about humans living and working together toward those objectives you quote.

 

I think I was pretty specific about that, Will - refusal to secure our rights, engaged in destroying the safeguards that the Founders established in the Constitution, an unelected federal bureaucracy that has become a power unto itself. I could go on if you like, but I think you get the point without me having to flog it to the bone and sinew.

I'm not an Anarchist - I recognize that there is a necessary and proper role for government, but the problem is when government exceeds what is necessary and proper and erodes our rights and prosperity. That is the government we have now, and we have a Constitution and a Bill of Rights for a reason, and that is to limit the powers of government so that we can secure our rights and prosperity.

 

You failed to identify anything that you think you are being denied.

So, there is no possibility of addressing your concerns.

This is more of your broad ranging concern that can't possibly be addressed.

You even point out the problem. You recognize the necessity of government involvement, making it a matter of specific issues that you believe have somehow infringed you quality of life.

 

You're moving the goalposts. You didn't ask me to identify what I "think" I'm being denied, you asked me what I hate about our government and I answered that question.

You most certainly could if you wanted to.

And if it's a list you want I can provide you with one tomorrow, but weren't you just complaining about how the government denies individual women the right to make their own "healthcare" decisions? Yes you were, in Post #39 above.

FYI, government denying individuals the right to make their own healthcare decisions, whether that decision involves getting an abortion, purchasing health insurance or taking a vaccine, qualifies as government refusing to secure our rights, in this case, our right to self-proprietorship.

Do you still find "no possibility" of addressing my concerns, even though they happen to be concerns of your own?

Again, you most certainly could address that concern if you wanted to.

And if you don't want to address it that's fine. Just don't hand me that "can't possibly be addressed" jive.

The issue of government exceeding its powers, enumerated and otherwise, is a matter concerning both broad range and particular concerns.

 

Nicely put, Mike.

 

You said one thing you hate about America is that you are being denied rights. So, I asked for specifics.

I don't hate America for that. It's coming from the Republican party in our legislatures and even our highest courts. Unfortunately, democracy doesn't always get you what you want.

But, that's not a justification for hating America or pushing to pervert democracy - we just have work to do.

I don't like our system of payment for healthcare, either. Like all other first world countries and most of the rest, the working solution to healthcare is some version of single payer - somewhat like our Medicare system.

Our healthcare system allows you to refuse treatment if you so desire, in most situations. Remember the case of the woman who refused chemotherapy for her cancer, choosing to risk her life in favor of the survival of her fetus? In fact, in that case, defying all odds and medical advice, she AND the fetus survived!!

Defending America against biological attack thoroughly justifies government action and required public participation. What YOU do absolutely does affect others. Your rights to choice DO end when you start doing damage to others by refusing to be part of our defense.

Where the government should stop is not a bright line. There will always be disagreement on that.

But, that's why we are a democracy.

 

I would say there's no stopping point going backward until you get to the division of the Roman Empire.
In 286 CE the Emperor Diocletian divided Rome into East and West to try and stabilize the empire. In 395 the division became formal. The western empire disappeared in 476 CE, and West and East followed different paths thereafter.

 

Other, and that other being President Joseph Biden

With Crazy Tate as the first alternate.